Politics and weblogs and internet¶

Sometimes I read a weblog entry that prompts me to do more thinking on the subject. Doc Searls just wrote one. It includes a link to a talk someone had with him.

It's all about the upcoming (well, a year or so) US president elections. Doc picks Howard Dean to win the presidential campaign in 2004. "The hyperlinked underdogs are going to subvert the isolated overdogs every time". Apparently Howard Dean is very, very active on the internet. Look at his weblog and look at the sheer amount of links on the left hand side of the page. (I wonder how much of that weblog he writes himself, though). But I get the impression that his election campaign will be very interactive (internet-interactive). At least an Atlanta newspaper sais The Internet, pioneered nationally by the Dean campaign as an organizational and fund-raising tool, has been credited with helping to make Dean a top contender.

So now back to Doc's The hyperlinked underdogs are going to subvert the isolated overdogs every time, .... He's betting that the internet 'll give Dean a huge network that no Texan oil barron can buy with normal means.

A nice quote by Doc: Bringing matters to light is what we do here, one way or another. Better to link a million candles than curse the darkness. Well, in my experience a few candles can do a lot of good. During the war on Iraq the best source of information was the collective weblog of bbc reporters. When an individual reporter picked up a piece of news or intelligence, he put it up on the weblog page for all to see. I watched the (Dutch) 20:00 news for the graphics and the commentary, but my main news source was that internet page with a little bit of text...

Let me end this not entirely coherent post with a quote from Dean that gives me some hope: I have serious concerns about the increasingly unilateralist approach to foreign policy we have seen from the current Administration.

Ok, almost forgot to write down the thing I want to do a bit more thinking/researching on: is there any weblogging activity in Dutch politics? Are there party members that are open to the outside world? There is a big networking opportunity out there...

update: Gary Hart also has a blog (he considered an '04 candidacy but didn't continue with it). This is actuall a good example of the power of a weblog. Would he have gotten an article like this in a regular newspaper? Now he can publish it himself.

Switching to Dutch now

Ik keek net op de pagina van de christenunie en wat stond er bij het nieuws : dat twee Groninger raadsleden (binnenkort drie) met een weblog begonnen zijn. Waaronder David de Jong van de ChristenUnie (de andere twee zijn van de vvd en groen links). Interessant.